Talk:Powell and Pressburger

Move from The Archers

I 'moved' this page from The Archers (film production) by copying the content and adding a redirect to the old page. In fact, I should have renamed it. See the original page for the initial history of this article. Jihg 12:26, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)

My Edit

"There are contemporary echoes in the Dogme 95 manifesto."

Listen, your love of Dogme 95 is commendable. However, not everything relates to it. The films of Powell and Pressburger are different than that of Lars von Trier. It would be like quoting something from Ingmar Berman and stating that is how Steven Spielberg feels as well. He may feel that way but that is beside the point. Let's just talk about these great films by Powell and Pressburger and leave it at that.

It only said that there were contemporary echoes. Of course the films are different, nobody suggested otherwise. When I saw that comment, entered by somebody else, I thought it was an interesting comparison because they are about the only two groups of film-makers that have set out a manifesto like that. SteveCrook 09:37, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

What about the Chaplin, Griffith, Fairbanks, and Pickford when they founded United Artists? They made a similar statement. There are many filmmakers who have stated similar things but don't call them manifestos. The Archers's films are highly expressionistic. Dogme 95 denounces expressionism. Now, I have my problems with Dogme 95, however, this is a free country and you can choose what films to like. However, NOT EVERY WIKIPEDIA ARTICLE NEEDS A CONTEMPORARY REFERENCE!!! Don't try to make comparisans between two completly different things!!!

Greatest legacy?

Artihcus022 added a paragraph: Without a doubt, their greatest legacy is their pioneering use of the technicolor process as attested by the visual slendour in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus, The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann. Is that "without a doubt" their greatest legacy? What about all their other legacies? Their B&W films like Forty-Ninth Parallel, A Canterbury Tale, I Know Where I'm Going!, The Small Back Room etc. Their "crusade against materialism" and the documentary movement that was so prevalent and beloved of the critics at the time. What about their fearless introduction of raw emotion, art and so many other subjects into their films? What about their strange and unique way of working? Not only the joint credit but the whole company of The Archers and their regular stable of actors. What about their total independence from the studio system (for as long as they could)? I think that all of those things are great legacies which have inspired admiration and wonder in their audiences, many of whom are film-makers. -- SteveCrook 21:02, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Torn apart?

Please explain 68.167.191.137 (talk) 23:41, 4 March 2008 (UTC).

Your'e adding stuff without regard to what it physically does to the article layout, and taking out stuff that's interesting and important. Give me a moment, and I'll show you what I mean. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) (talk / cont) 23:44, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Okay thanks. 68.167.191.137 (talk) 23:49, 4 March 2008 (UTC).

Regarding your comment on my talk page, I don't intend to throw out he baby with the bathwater, but I also don't want to lose good content from the article. Also, excessive tagging defaces an article unnecessarily. I have real-life concerns to take care of at the moment, but I've restored your info box in a way that doesn't disrupt the article, and I'll restore some more of your changes in the few minutes I have availabe right now. If you're going to make changes, please be a mit more conservative and take a look at what they're doing to the article overall. Thanks. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)} 23:57, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Now that I've had the chance to examine them more closely, I don't think the remainder of the edits you made inmprove the article. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)} 00:07, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Round 2 (WP:3RR avoidance)

You've partially specified some issues you had, and you made the effort to at least review other work I did before dismissing it without much explanation. To keep this moving, let me enumerate the issues I was attempting to address, which still need to be dealt with:

1. One footnote (and it's a link to the P&P fansite of a wikipedian who has repeatedly contributed to this article). If you're willing to make a pass through the article to address this, I can wait to see what you come up with. Otherwise, one or more of the commonly-accepted mechanisms for identifying this shortcoming need to be introduced. Your user page makes your general opinion clear on this topic (too damn many cleanup tags!) but that doesn't solve the problem. As the 2nd commandment from WP:ENC says: WIKIPEDIA IS NOT FOR UNSOURCED MATERIAL (uppercase and bold as in the original).
2. Use of peacock terms. I removed sentences like "They made a series of influential films in the 1940s and 1950s. They are now regarded as two of the most significant figures in British cinema." and "they were a group of some of the most talented film makers around at the time" in an attempt to address this. Of course, if reputable critics can be quoted along those lines, that would be fine.
3. Use of weasel words, e.g. "Some people do still dismiss Emeric as 'Michael Powell's scriptwriter'"

Some of the other changes I made were attempts to write a better article. My shortcomings if any at that can be dealt with separately. I'll re-apply some minor (and I hope, uncontroversial) changes but will await your timely response before I take it further. 68.167.191.137 (contribs) 01:00, 5 March 2008 (UTC).

You're right that I don't, in general, like clean-up tags, and have observed that they're over-used, but I'm also a pragmatic guy, so if you think that the article in general is under-referenced and add a single clean-up tag to the bottom of the article to indicate that, I'm not going to remove it.

As for over-enthusiasm, you have something of a point, but rather than delete whole statements, I'd prefer to see them somewhat toned down.

Just so you know, after I posted the comment above (about not adding in the rest of the changes you made), I went through them again and changed my mind -- I ended re-adding cats, putting back the 2-column format, restoring some wikilinks and some other minor changes. I'm not attempting to stop you from improving the article, far from it, but I did freak out just a little when the addition of the info box screwed up the article's layout and with the addition of all the fact tags and clean-up tags. I'll try to evaluate your changes with an open mind, and I'll also apply my eye to the article and see where improvements can be made. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)} 01:25, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I very much like the pull-quotes, that's a change I wouldn't have thought of, and you're certainly correct that surnames are more appropriate throughout. I don't think the splitting of the ext. links in that way is particularly useful, and have reverted it. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)}

Thanks, and your reversion is fine since leaving the parenthetical annotation let's the reader know what website they're heading to. Neither of the fansite's seems ad-laden at first glance. Wikipedia gets abused by some people who add their websites as external links with the obvious goal of attracting traffic to an AdSense-encrusted website. 68.167.191.137 (talk) 01:53, 5 March 2008 (UTC).

Incidentally, while I'm thinking of it, on a couple of other articles you replaced separate links for Powell & Pressburger with a link for this article, which is fine, but I altered the link to say "Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger" as opposed to the naked "Powell and Pressburger". I suggest that you might what to use "Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger|Powell and Pressburger" in the future as well - it looks better. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)} 01:35, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Valid point. 68.167.191.137 (talk) 01:53, 5 March 2008 (UTC).

One other thought: there's umpteen billion facts on Wikipedia, and the vast majority of them are unsourced. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)} 01:36, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

When I first started editing wikipedia articles almost five years ago, virtually nothing was footnoted. It was the addition of the cite.php-based refs <ref></ref><references />, etc. that got me hooked on using references, and I haven't looked back. Dedicated Wikipedians have to have a little Sisyphus in them I guess. :-) 68.167.191.137 (talk) 01:53, 5 March 2008 (UTC).

Let me be clear: I think citations, refs, footnotes, whatever are a good thing - verifiability is something to be desired. I simply recognize that if we were to slap "fact" tags on every uncited bit of information on Wikipedia, it would probably double the size of the database, so I think it's wise to go slow with the tags, and use them only for "facts" which are highly doubtful, but for which there's not enough negatice evidence to remove them.

On the other hand, I'm all for adding refs whenever possible. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)} 02:34, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) I've done a bit of rewriting, especially of the section about how the collaboration worked, and tried to address what I believe are your concerns about the article. Please take a look and see if there are other adjustments to be made. I'll make another pass through and see what I see. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)} 02:01, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Overall, IMO the article looks _much_ better then the version from last month; it deals with the bulk of the issues I had when I read it a few hours ago and first tackled a rewrite. There are still a few items that need tagging inline but for now I've just put in a bunch of comments. 68.167.191.137 (talk) 03:02, 5 March 2008 (UTC).

I agree with some of your inline comments, and not others. Certainly, the article generally needs more references, but not every evaluative adjective needs to be specifically cited. For instance, P&P are notable and significant British filmmarkers whether or not someone finds a film critic to say so - this is an example of what I was talking about above.

In any event, the most productive and useful thing to do at this point is to see if you can find some citations to fill in the gaps that you perceive. I don't have a lot of offline resources on this topic, but I'll take a look at what I have an add in what I can. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)} 03:13, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. The last item I'll note for now is that the list of external links needs to be pared (see Wikipedia:NOT#LINK); Some of them could be used as references. 68.167.191.137 (talk) 03:22, 5 March 2008 (UTC).

The external links are hardly extensive. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)} 03:31, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know, you turn your back on something for five minutes ...
I've added citations for all the places they were asked for.
The powell-pressburger.org site is hardly a "fan page" it's a site run by the Powell and Pressburger Appreciation Society. Contributors include many people still in the industry who like and promote their films and it is referred to for information about P&P by the British Film Institute, The Criterion Collection when they make DVDs of the films and many others.
The list of external links and the bibliography is already kept pared down to a minimum. I could add a LOT more but don't.
I'll have another look at this page this evening and see if there's anything that's been removed that shouldn't have been -- SteveCrook (talk) 07:44, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for adding the cites - I thought a lot of the material must have come from Powell's book, but I couldn't immediately locate it to confirm. I hope that whe you peruse the article, my tinkering won't have eliminated anything important - I tried not to. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^{(talk / cont)} 07:59, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Founding year of Archers

This article (and many Internet sources) says it is 1943. However, One of Our Aircraft... was already made by Archers in 1942... What is the correct year here?--Nedergard (talk) 07:20, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Well the date of 1943 is obviously incorrect. The first film to carry the arrow in the target logo of The Archers was The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) so a lot of people thing that was the first film by The Archers. But OOOAIM was the first Archers film and the first to carry the joint credit of "Written, Produced and Directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger" -- SteveCrook (talk) 22:33, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

P.S. They may not have incorporated The Archers into a registered company (Archers Productions Ltd) until 1943. I'll have to check on that. But OOOAIM refers to "The Archers" in the opening credits -- SteveCrook (talk) 22:36, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Most commercially successful film?

The article on The Battle of the River Plate states with sources that it, not Red Shoes, is, so have amended accordingly.Straw Cat (talk) 17:57, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

Did you read the sources referenced? Neither of them mention The Battle of the River Plate as being more commercially successful than The Red Shoes or mention any actual figures. So the article on The Battle of the River Plate (film) says that it was their most commercially successful film and cites a couple of sources. But those sources don't actually support that assertion :) The TCM article calls it "the last great success for The Archers" but doesn't make any comparison to the figures for The Red Shoes. The Red Shoes eventually made Variety's 'Golden Fifty' list of the top money-makers of all time. I don't think that The Battle of the River Plate ever made it into that list -- SteveCrook (talk) 22:27, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

The IMDB trivia section states "This was Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's most financially successful film" - but without quoting any actual figures or source! Straw Cat (talk) 00:56, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Powell didn't mention how much they made on it, or even how much they got paid for it, in his autobiography or I would have added that to his & Emeric's biography pages on the IMDb. I think we'll have to do a bit of digging to get beyond what is only heresay evidence so far -- SteveCrook (talk) 01:39, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

Critical opinions section

There is the following statement in the Critical opinions section:

British film critics gave the films of Powell and Pressburger a mixed reaction at the time, acknowledging their creativity but sometimes questioning their motivations and taste. For better or worse, The Archers were always out of step with mainstream British cinema.

References

While the reviews themselves may well be individually sufficient for sourcing what each say about the film, their usage in this manner is not appropriate. They are being 'sampled' to support general statements about the film's overall critical reception, which amounts to original research. Wikipedia:Review aggregators stipulates that review aggregators are not arbiters of critical consensus, and by extension, I think it is safe to say neither are handpicked reviews hosted on a self-published website i.e. selecting a bunch of reviews does not permit us to make qualitative judgments about how the films were reviewed at the time. The guideline clearly states that we should use books and periodicals to provide a retrospective overview of how films were reviewed by critics. This was why I tagged that section so I would appreciate it if the tag is left in placed to highlight a direction of further improvement for the article. Betty Logan (talk) 17:19, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

As a point of interest, and as the main organiser of the group that publishes information on the web site in question, when does any web site stop being a "self-published website"? The definition at WP:SPS could apply to just about any web site, certainly the vast majority. The reviews referenced are all published reviews and aren't carefully "handpicked", "sampled" or "selected" to only include favourable reviews. Contemporary reviews of these films and the film-makers aren't easy to find and we include any bad ones as well as any good ones. Many of the contemporary reviews referenced in the main article are far from favourable. That was the point of referencing them. To show that films that are generally considered to be masterpieces today didn't attract favourable reviews when the films were first released. They were out of step with the critical consensus of the time. But they have lasted a lot longer, growing in popularity over the years -- SteveCrook (talk) 23:55, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Any site that doesn't have some degree of professional oversight is considered "self-published", but that is besides the point. Even if it were not, that would still not be a basis for coming to conclusions about the critical reception of the film, since none of the actual reviews draw any conclusions about how the films were reviewed. Betty Logan (talk) 03:42, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not so concerned about the conclusions reached by other people so much as the perceived insult to me & the site I manage which is cited in many books, theses and learned people. Who determines this "degree of professional oversight"? Is this just your opinion or is there some official measure? -- SteveCrook (talk) 11:23, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

I don't know what you are perceiving to be "insulting" about my comments. Your website is basically a personal run fansite, is it not? You may run it very well, but it doesn't alter the nature of what it is. A non-SPS website would be something like the British Film Institute website, which is a credible academic resource that is presumably able to finance and recruit qualified and professional researchers. The sort of sources we really should be looking to are renowned sites like the BFI and AFI, articles published in peer reviewed academic journals and high quality magazines (think Sight and Sound rather than Empire), and books published by authors who are acknowledged as experts in their areas. Now, all this tag does is highlight that the P&P site is a personal run site; I have not made any observations one way or the other in regards to the quality of the site. I don't disagree with your summation of the critical consensus of the time which is why I left the text in and simply tagged it; however, it would be better if we could source such observations to something like the BFI, or a book published about Powell and Pressburger. Betty Logan (talk) 13:03, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

The BFI site isn't run by "credible academics" or "professional researchers", it's run by employees of the BFI - who then often come to our group for information about P&P, as do many academics and other people :) The employees of the BFI don't claim to be experts in every field of British film. Don't be misled by appearances over content. The PaPAS site may not be the flashiest site ever made, but that's because it isn't trying to sell anything. It's just providing valuable information for people interested in the films, and the people that made them. Just because some people aren't being paid for something, that doesn't make the information they provide any less valuable or important. There are published books about P&P that would presumably be acceptable as Wikipedia references, even though they are full of errors (you know which book I mean :) ). The perceived insult isn't in any of your comments so much as in your attaching the tag WP:SPS which in itself is quite insulting because it is really talking about self-aggrandising web sites but is such a loose definition that it could be applied to any web site, professional or not. The BFI site is a WP:SPS - because it's published by the BFI. Various people have probably contributed to that summation of the critical consensus, but I don't think that I contributed to it, I just gave the references to confirm it -- SteveCrook (talk) 13:40, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

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